From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2002-09-03T06:03:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby jobs

Kyle Rawlins wrote:
> On Sun, 2002-09-01 at 15:18, Phlip wrote:
> 
>>Is anyone, like, making money writing Ruby programs yet? Not the books or 
>>speeches; the actual "Value Added" thing.
> 
> 
> I am using ruby on a corpus linguistics project I am working on.  Of
> course the money (and it's a token amount, rather than the reason I'm
> doing it) is really being paid for answers to research questions, and it
> doesn't matter what language I use to anyone except me.  Nevertheless I
> have the feeling that ruby is getting a bit of use in this sort of
> research setting, and will continue to get more.

Ruby is a natural for the research world, because it's possible to write 
ruby code that can be read by people who are technically proficient in 
the subject domain, but whose only contact with programming was a C or 
Pascal class years ago. This is partly because of the syntax being 
fairly close to traditional languages, without too many surprises, and 
partly because of things like GC and the consistent object model. But 
also, it's easy to use ruby's blocks to create a "little language" that 
is very close to the research domain.

I've been lucky to be able choose the best tool for the job in my work, 
and so I use Ruby for all tasks where speed is not critical. This ranges 
from text file manipulation to simulation specification, control, and 
visualization. In some speed-critical cases, I even use ruby to generate 
C code from specifications written in ruby, further insulating the 
research-oriented user from the dangers of C.

At the moment I'm the only ruby programmer in the group, but, in the 
next year, two or three of my coworkers (whose programming skills are 
mostly C/C++) will probably learn some ruby.